Profile picture
, 3 tweets, 1 min read
My Authors
Read all threads
Dear CTOs and other tech leaders who collect and tabulate the typical incident metrics:

Tech leaders: I dare you — for only *one* quarter — to not ask/require *anyone* in your org to report MTTR/MTTD/MTT*/count of incidents. No charts, no plots. (1/3)
Instead: collect anonymous reflections on how *difficult* it was to handle those incidents, in prose (not standardized numerical), from only those who handled them, and read them ALL.

You will learn so much more about...much more than the chart will ever tell you. (2/3)
But: I’m very sure no leader will publicly take me up on this dare. 😀
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh.

Keep Current with John Allspaw

Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

Twitter may remove this content at anytime, convert it as a PDF, save and print for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video

1) Follow Thread Reader App on Twitter so you can easily mention us!

2) Go to a Twitter thread (series of Tweets by the same owner) and mention us with a keyword "unroll" @threadreaderapp unroll

You can practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @allspaw see all

Profile picture
John Allspaw
@allspaw
A story: a classmate of mine in my master’s program in Human Factors and Systems Safety (@lunduniversity) who came from the world of safety in oil and gas construction told me a thing that new safety people were taught early on...(1/n)
“Always keep a bottle of Jack Daniels in your trunk.”

Why? Because sooner or later, someone will get hurt on the site and because it’s out in the middle of nowhere, you, the safety person, will offer to drive them to the nearest hospital. (2/n)
On the way, you say “hey, so it’s a bit of a long drive and you’re in some pain. If you want, you can take some swigs from this to at least help with the pain, it’s all I’ve got...”

Which, invariably, your passenger will take you up on.
Read 6 tweets
Profile picture
John Allspaw
@allspaw
Software Engineers: at some point during this next week, some of you may make changes to production code or infrastructure.

This thread is for you.
You will do all the things you think are necessary to be confident that the change will do what you intend, and you’ll not do any more than that.

You’ll be as thorough as you believe you should, just like you have with every successful change you’ve made before.
When it becomes clear that the change didn’t do what you expected and triggers an incident, a shift in focus will take place amongst your colleagues and you might take part in it yourself.
Read 8 tweets
Profile picture
John Allspaw
@allspaw
Software and tech folks: interested in capacity, saturation, and adaptation that happens in medical facilities? I got you — my partner at @AdaptiveCLabs Dr. Richard Cook (@ri_cook) is a pioneer of Resilience Engineering and studied this for literally decades (thread)...
First, for those who have not read it, I give you the seminal “How Complex Systems Fail” paper: adaptivecapacitylabs.com/HowComplexSyst…

(largely considered to be the “gateway” paper to safety in complex systems and incidents)
Next up, “Being Bumpable: Consequences of resource saturation and near-saturation for cognitive demands on ICU practitioners” on the topic of what coping strategies hospitals use in managing saturation of incoming patients

researchgate.net/publication/33…
Read 7 tweets

Embed code for your website

×
Follow Us on Twitter!

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!

This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3.00/month or $30.00/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!